Gallows Lane idm-2

by Brian McGilloway

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nolvadex. You can take them for moobs,’ he replied, already standing up and gathering his belongings.

  ‘What are moobs?’ I asked.

  ‘Something very close to your heart, Inspector. Very close,’ he concluded, winking at me once before he opened the door and walked out.

  Chapter Nine

  Sunday, 6 June

  After Mass, I dropped Debbie and the kids round with her mother and headed into the station. Williams and I sat in our store-room/office together discussing the findings of the pathologist’s report into the death of Peter Webb.

  A note had been left on our desk to let us know that McDermott had been fingerprinted the previous day. His prints did not match those found on the condom we discovered near Karen Doherty’s body. Caroline seemed genuinely disappointed when we got the word.

  With no other immediate leads to follow, we decided to concentrate on the Webb case. Taking a whiteboard from the unused conference room upstairs, we listed our possible suspects. The obvious one, despite my judgement that he was on the level, was James Kerr, who had been seen in Webb’s grounds in the days prior to his death. In addition, though, it was clear that Webb’s own wife was involved in some form of relationship with another man. Further to this, Webb had been visited by his British friend on the day of his death. Williams elected to canvass the local bars to see if, as Mrs Webb had claimed, they had gone for a drink, and whether anyone had noticed anything suspicious. She also offered to follow up on the widow’s as yet unidentified lover.

  For my own part, I had two leads to follow: the first, James Kerr, was one with which I had so far failed spectacularly. The second was the suspected British Special Branch officer. I believed that, at least in that respect, Jim Hendry, over the border in Strabane, might be of some assistance. When I phoned him, though, I was told he was out for the day and would call me later.

  I had not discussed it with Williams, but I was also aware of the fact that there remained, however peripherally, another suspect. Webb’s apparent suicide in remorse for the drugs and guns found on his land vindicated Patterson by seemingly indicting Webb. I didn’t want to consider the possibility that one of my colleagues would murder someone simply to secure their career and improve their promotion prospects.

  The only lead I had for Kerr remained Reverend Charles Bardwell. I phoned him and was told he was in Derry for the day, organizing a cross-community football match for ex-prisoners. Twenty-five minutes later, I stood watching while twenty-two men of various ages and sizes heaved and sweated after a slightly deflated football. I noticed that the teams were wearing the colours of Celtic and Rangers, Scottish football teams synonymous with the religious divide in Northern Ireland. It was only as I shook hands with Reverend Bardwell and expressed my surprise at the colours being worn, that I learned the Protestants wore the Celtic tops and the Catholic ex-prisoners Rangers gear. At the end of the match, as they walked across Prehen Playing Fields towards a marquee, they swapped tops.

  I walked over with Bardwell to the tent under which a group of men stood smoking cigarettes and drinking isotonic drinks as they attempted to recover from the morning’s exertions. One or two were spiking their drinks with something a little stronger; I declined the offer of a drink, though I took a cigarette, unsure at to whether the men knew my profession.

  ‘Some of them will guess,’ Bardwell said to me, seeming to have read my thoughts. ‘Most of them won’t care, Inspector. They’ve served their time and come out the other side.’

  I nodded, but did not reply. ‘So, how do you pay for all this?’ I asked, gesturing towards the football pitch.

  ‘Grants,’ he explained, drawing on his cigarette. He winked over at one of the players who raised his glass in reciprocal salute. ‘The Council give us?2,000; the NIO matches it.’

  ‘Is?4,000 enough to keep you going for a year?’ I asked.

  ‘Jesus, boy; the four grand is for this football match. And the after-match victuals, of course.’

  ‘Four thousand!’ I spluttered incredulously. ‘Would the money not be better spent trying to compensate the victims of some of this crew?’ I knew it was a stupid argument to begin and regretted it even as I spoke.

  But Bardwell did not launch into a tirade about serving their time or rehabilitation versus punishment. Instead he smiled at me, nodding his head as if all his suspicions had been proven correct. ‘Are you one of the sceptical ones, then, Inspector? Don’t believe these men have anything good to offer? Take wee Jamie Kerr, for instance. When you heard he’d found God, what was your first thought? Good for him? Or liar?’ He smirked knowingly. His presumption grated on me — perhaps because he was, at least partially, right.

  ‘I wanted to believe him, actually. My faith is private, Reverend; I don’t presume to judge other people’s; plank in your own eye before the splinter in your neighbour’s and all that.’

  ‘If that’s true, you’re an exception among policemen; most of them think this kind of thing is scandalous.’

  ‘Maybe it’s because we spend our days trying to catch these men — bring some justice for the victims. You spend your time trying to argue on their behalf.’

  ‘These men are victims too, Inspector.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ The smoke from our cigarettes hung in the space between us. Eventually, Bardwell spoke.

  ‘So, I’m guessing you didn’t come all the way down here to appreciate the sport. What can I do you for?’

  ‘You mentioned James Kerr. I need to find him. I think you could help me.’

  ‘Now why would I do that?’

  ‘James left a leaflet in my car with your name on it. If he’s proselytizing for you, I can only assume he’s still in contact with you.’

  ‘And I’d tell you where he is because. .?’

  ‘He’s wanted in connection with a possible murder.’

  Bardwell laughed emptily, shook his head and dropped his cigarette butt on the ground, grinding it under his foot. ‘Jamie didn’t kill anyone, Inspector. Even when he went away before, it was armed robbery — and he was the only one of the gang without an effing gun!’

  ‘Well, in that case, he should hand himself in — let us question him and eliminate him from inquiries.’

  ‘Bullshit, Inspector. Jamie’s a sitting duck. An ex-con: perfect for stitching up — again. Who’s he meant to have killed anyhow?’

  ‘A local man called Peter Webb.’

  Bardwell paused momentarily and it was clear that the name meant something to him. He stared into the middle distance, shading his eyes as if from the glare of the sun. But the sun wasn’t in his eyes and I knew the gesture was a stalling tactic. ‘What evidence have you for suspecting James?’

  ‘He was seen prowling around Webb’s house in the days prior to his death. During a conversation I had with James, he as good as told me he wanted to see Peter Webb.’

  ‘How did he die?’ Bardwell asked, looking over my shoulder at the men laughing and sharing tales of soccer glory already exaggerated.

  ‘He was hanged from a tree on Gallows Lane. Made to look like suicide. We believe he was strangled.’

  ‘In Potter’s Field,’ Bardwell muttered.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Potter’s Field — where the traitor Judas hanged himself in remorse for his crime.’ Bardwell finally turned and looked at me. ‘I’m thinking out loud. I won’t tell you where James is, but I can perhaps explain the connection with Webb.’

  This is the story he told me.

  Following his community service, James had taken an interest in gardening, realizing that it was something in which he was not unskilled, which could earn him money and which did not require an education. He took to tending the gardens of several of the bigger houses in Lifford, reasoning that fewer clients with larger gardens would pay better and lend him a certain exclusivity. One of the gardens he tended was that of Peter and Sinead Webb. And, if the story he told Bardwell was to be believed, it was Webb
who encouraged James to participate in the robbery which resulted in his arrest.

  Kerr claimed that, during one of their conversations over his tea break, he had expressed admiration for Mrs Webb’s new car. Webb apparently had engaged the boy in a lengthy discussion on cars and driving, during which Kerr boasted openly about his own driving skills. The next time Kerr turned up to work on the Webbs’ garden, Peter Webb made him a proposition: he told him that he needed a driver for a job; someone who could handle a fast car along the back roads. Kerr asked what kind of job and Webb tapped his nose and winked. ‘You’ll be seen right,’ he said.

  Kerr thought nothing more of the conversation for several months, as the days began to turn and his gardening work slowed. Then, one day in late November, he received a phone call from Peter Webb, asking to meet in a local bar.

  That evening he approached McElroy’s with a nervous skittering in his stomach, as though he were going for a job interview. Webb sat near the back of the bar nursing a hot whiskey — for a cold, he said. He bought the boy a whiskey too, and Kerr felt respected. Then Webb told James that, on the following Tuesday, he would be needed to drive. He was to collect a car from the local chapel car park and drive to the picnic area on the outskirts of Ballindrait. There he would meet three men. He was to drive them along the back roads across the border into the North. By this stage all the permanent army checkpoints that had blighted the border roads were long gone. Though the police still carried out spot searches on the main roads, the back roads were generally empty. No force could police them all and no one knew them as well as Kerr, who had spent half his youth joyriding along them.

  Once in the North, James was to drive the men to Castlederg Post Office and wait for them, before returning via Clady, over the back road into the South again. He was to drop the men off at a point of their choosing and then burn out the car. For this service, James would receive an early Christmas present of ?1,000.

  Tuesday, 23 January 1996 was a crisp, clear winter’s day where the sun lay low in the sky and stretched the shadows of the cattle in the fields. James walked out to the chapel, his heart thudding in his chest. One of his neighbours drove past and offered him a lift, but he refused. What if they asked him where he was going? Or sat in the car park and saw him getting into a car that wasn’t his? No, Jamie Kerr wasn’t stupid. He waved them on and, thereafter turned his face towards the privet hedges that edged the roadway whenever he heard a car approach. Finally he made it to the car park, ten minutes early, too. There were three cars sitting outside the chapel: one, he knew, belonged to Father Jackson, the parish priest — the black sporty Honda, if you don’t mind; was it any fucking wonder he’d no time for the Church? All that hypocrisy about poverty and that. He spat on the car in disgust as he passed it; then the thought of poverty made him think again of the grand that would soon be his and his stomach flipped and something tingled deep in his loins. He’d buy a car — a proper one of his own. After that he’d pull some bitch; then she’d pull him in the back of the car. That made him laugh and tingle all over again. Better get a hold of yourself, he thought. Keep focus.

  He approached the car closest to him — an old Fiesta — and tried the door. Webb had said the car would be unlocked; the keys under the seat. The Fiesta was locked tight and, when James looked in, someone had put one of those security bars across the steering wheel. For fuck’s sake, he thought — who’d want to steal an old Fiesta anyhow? The other car was sweet: a silver Rover 400. He tried the handle, his back to the car, his hands behind him, surveying the church and the road to see if he was being watched. It all came naturally to him, he thought. He was cut out for this kind of job.

  It took him a few minutes to familiarize himself with the car and reset the radio to some decent music. He looked through the previous owner’s tape collection, but it was mostly crap he’d never heard of and country and western shit. Instead he settled for a station playing Oasis. ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’; there’d be plenty of both when he got his grand. He turned the music right up and rolled down the window in defiance at the Church, then spun out on to the main road.

  He waited fifteen minutes in the picnic area for the others to arrive. While he waited he practised looking hard in the mirror: chewing gum at the side of his mouth; his sleeves rolled up; his hair slicked back. He chewed exaggeratedly and winked at himself in the mirror. He wasn’t sure whether he needed a shit or a shag, he was so nervous and excited. And maybe he thought about Mary Gallagher. And maybe he didn’t.

  Then, almost without his noticing, they were there. Three men appeared and got into the car. The three wore stockings halfway down their faces, so only their mouths showed. James winked into the mirror and turned to the one who had sat up front beside him. ‘All right men,’ he said around his chewing gum. ‘Let’s go to work.’ He’d heard that in a film and it sounded cool.

  ‘Shut the fuck up and turn that shit off the radio, son. Just drive the fucking car,’ the man beside him said in a tone that suggested this was not a topic for discussion. James did exactly as he was told and drove off in silence, his humiliation almost palpable.

  He glanced in the rear-view mirror at the two men behind him, both of whom carried shotguns. One, he suspected, was Peter Webb, though he was acting as if he didn’t know him. Even when Jamie smiled in the mirror at him, the man simply stared back, his expression unreadable. He deduced that Webb didn’t want the others to know that Jamie knew who he was, for some reason, and so decided to act accordingly. Maybe it would make him look more professional — like one of the gang. The other back seat passenger he did not recognize, though he looked kind of pimply. The man’s flat, obsidian eyes held his gaze in the mirror for a second. ‘What the fuck are you looking at, gay boy?’ he sneered. ‘Keep your eyes on the fucking road.’

  James Kerr did not speak again. As they crossed the border, passing the pine forest through which the road was cut, he felt the tension in the car rise. Finally, they reached the loading bay at the back of the post office in Castlederg. ‘Do I need a mask?’ he asked his nearside passenger.

  ‘Wouldn’t you look pretty stupid sitting in the car with a pair of tights on your head. Act normal and no one will even notice you.’ Then the three men got out and jogged up to the back door of the shop, pulling the stockings fully over their faces.

  While he waited James tried not to look around him. The main car park was at the front, so there were no other cars around him. That didn’t mean one couldn’t arrive. And if the cops came, they’d be blocked in behind the shop. Sweat began to prickle on his back. What if the plan went wrong — what then? He felt a wave of nausea wash through him and only the fear of embarrassing himself in front of the three men prevented him from vomiting. He listened for gunshots but heard nothing. Perhaps it had gone wrong. Maybe it had been a setup. Maybe they were spilling their guts inside — blaming it all on him.

  Then his three companions were back in the car, screaming at him to get a move on; he slammed his foot on the accelerator and the car revved madly but did not move. He panicked.

  ‘Get it in gear, you useless wanker,’ the man with the black eyes beside him spat.

  He tried to explain himself as he worked with the gear stick; his arms and legs seeming to have lost the ability to coordinate movement. His passenger gripped the gear stick, crushing James’s hand under his own, and shunted the stick into first. James floored the accelerator a second time and the car lurched forward and sped out on to the road. It was only as James righted the car that he realized he hadn’t even checked to see if anything was coming before he pulled out. ‘Fuck,’ he thought; ‘that was close.’

  As Castlederg receded in the rear-view mirror James felt the mood in the car lighten and he too began to relax. This was his part of the plan. The others had done their bit; he was in control now — they were counting on him. His new-found confidence encouraged him and he egged the motor on a bit, edging the dial towards seventy despite the narrowness of the unapproved road th
ey were travelling. James sensed the man beside him tense a little, his hand edging almost instinctively to grip the dashboard in front of him, and James felt a wave of heat inside him. The man was scared. Who was a gay boy now?

  ‘Did it go all right?’ he heard himself ask, almost without a shake in his voice.

  ‘Fucking perfect, Jame’s, one of the men in the back said, his Northern accent clear. This had been the man James hadn’t recognized. Yet there was something familiar about him that he couldn’t put his finger on. It began to annoy him that the men had still not shown him their faces.

  ‘We didn’t have to fire a shot,’ the man continued and held aloft a black bin bag, visibly loaded with blocks of something.

  ‘How much did we get?’ James asked and he sensed the man beside him snorting derisively.

  ‘Plenty, James. Plenty.’

  James did not speak again as they coasted through Clady. They were close to the border now; a few hundred yards away lay one thousand quid guaranteed — the RUC couldn’t follow them into the South even if they had been on their tails. James’s mind flicked to The Great Escape and Steve McQueen. The bike trick. Fucking weird the things you think of in a moment like this.

  ‘Stop along here,’ the man beside him said, and James glanced in the mirror, noticing that the others had loosened their seat belts. ‘We get out here.’

  Kerr slowed, looked around him. They were on a final stretch of road before the border; each side of the road shadowed by tall narrow pine trees, their lower branches bare of needles. Maybe this was where they were to burn the car. His momentary panic subsided; the car had been stolen in the South, so it made sense to burn it in the North, well away from the Guards.

  He pulled to a halt along the side of the road, the car on the edge of a ditch which dropped down to the forest floor ten feet beneath them. His passengers had got out of the car in the time it took him to cut the ignition and release his own seat belt. The one with the dark eyes had come round his side of the car and was opening his door for him. James leaned half out of the car, smiling. But the man did not return his smile. He raised his foot, using it to shove James back into the car. Then he lifted his shotgun, snapping a shell into place. Then everything exploded in colour, and sound, and shadow, and heat and burning. Through his own blood which stippled the windscreen James thought he saw a flock of crows take to the air soundlessly, their wings beating almost a reverberation of the blast.